We live on the flat, on the level, and yet - and so - we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as far as the gods. Some soar with art, others with religion; most with love. But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings. We may find ourselves bouncing across the ground with leg-fracting force, dragged towards some foreign railway line. Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes, for both.

The companionship of dead writers is a wonderful form of live friendship.

If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

Every love story is a potential grief story.

Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.

The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.